Men’s basketball back on track with conference win
It was a sight the Yellow Jackets have seen before – a 25-16 lead, cut to one in just a short amount of time.
Mitch Marmelstein, a senior guard for Grove City, banked a 3-point shot off the glass as the buzzer sounded to end the first half and put the score at 25-24 in a Presidents’ Athletic Conference matchup Saturday. It turned out to be the turning point for the Jackets (2-5, 1-1) in a 70-55 win in the Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse.
“We talked about resetting a bit at halftime,” said Waynesburg head coach Mark Christner. “Anytime in basketball that the other team throws a punch, you need to re-establish yourself. We can’t say, ‘hey let’s go out there and score the first eight points,’ but we can say, ‘let’s go out there and have good possessions offensively and play tight defensively’ and we did that. Our guys responded well.”
The Jackets got that message.
“Coach [Christner] was talking at halftime that he wanted that shot to go in,” said senior wingman Thomas Ellis of Waynesburg. “We needed a game like that. We’d been in that situation before against Thomas More, against Frostburg. We needed to be pushed and we responded well.”
The Jackets found themselves ahead at Frostburg State Nov. 25 by 10 with just over 11 minutes to play, but would see their lead vanish, falling in the end 85-70.
Fast-forward to Dec. 3 when Waynesburg hosted PAC-foe Thomas More and led in the early minutes of the second half by double digits only to be on the wrong side of a big run, as the Saints marched ahead and never looked back, defeating the Jackets 84-74 in the conference opener for both teams.
Waynesburg would come out in the second half and immediately get a 3-point play from senior forward Jason Propst, a three from senior forward Jacob Fleegle and a lay-up off a turnover by senior guard Kenny Klase before the Wolverines called a timeout. Suddenly, the Jackets had opened the half on an 8-0 run of their own. However, Waynesburg did not stop there. A Propst 3-point basket among other makes for the Jacket offense and some key stops on the opposite side of the floor led to a 22-7 run to start the half. At the 11-minute mark, the Jackets held a 49-35 lead.
If the Wolverines had any hope of coming back in the late stages, Klase and his 3-point play that put the Jackets up by 20 at 66-46 dashed them.
“Kenny is the kind of guy that gets overlooked a bit,” said Christner. “His versatility and toughness are so important to us. His mid-range game is one of the best in the conference, so that’s a challenge for us as a team and staff to get him looks, but absolutely, that play was huge for our team.”
Christner was happy the team put together a full game and said his players were hungry to finish and didn’t let up.
“Each game is different. Each game has its own story,” said Christner. “We’ve had those situations before and our guys knew that. We just wanted to concentrate on doing our job for a full 40 minutes and maintain a lead, because we haven’t really put together a full 40 yet this year.”
On the opposite bench, Grove City head coach Steve Lamie was proud his team didn’t seem to hang their heads.
“I really thought we just stayed the course,” said Lamie. “Waynesburg went up big in the first half, but I was proud that we didn’t panic. Sometimes when you get down big you try and get it all back in a couple possessions but that’s impossible. The second half was more of them [Waynesburg] being stronger and bigger. They imposed that strength on us and it eventually wore us out.”
At the end of the day, Waynesburg had four players who registered double digit points: Propst (15), which was the game-high, Ellis (14), Klase (12) and junior D.J. Ritchie (10).
It speaks to the depth of the team that 11 Jackets recorded double-digit minutes.
“Our depth is a huge strength of ours that we have to be able to utilize and we’re going to need it moving forward,” said Christner. “We have versatility too and we just try to find the right roles and combinations for our guys.”
Ellis echoed his coach’s thoughts.
“That’s one of our biggest assets is how deep we can go,” said Ellis. “We feel comfortable with 10 to 12 guys on the floor at any given time.”
“The win is big for us, but it’s only one win in a long season,” said Ellis. “The season is a grind. We’ll work on some things and take those to the court in our next few games, which are big for us.”
Waynesburg has two final tests before breaking a few days for Christmas when it faces Pitt-Greensburg at home Monday, then hosts Franciscan Dec. 20. Tipoff for the game against UPG is scheduled for 7 p.m.